Friday, December 9, 2016

Paul Revere Williams receives the AIA Gold Medal, Dec. 8, 2016As far as I can figure, this is a Gold Medal of many firsts: first African-American architect, first Googie architect, first Hollywood Regency architect, first tract house architect, first Late Moderne architect, first Palm Springs architect, first Las Vegas architect (Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi did not actually build in LV, as Williams did.) Perhaps we're getting away from the stranglehold of high arters?The original AIA press release repeated a myth that has been going around for a while now: that Williams designed the Theme Building at LAX. It was corrected, but it shows the tremendous difficulty in correcting a rumor once it has been let loose. Williams was part of a consortium that designed LAX, including lead architects William Pereir and Charles Luckman, and Welton Becket. As a matter of record, the Theme Building itself was designed out of the Pereira office, according to the building's engineer, the brilliant Richard Bradshaw (who also deserves a Gold Medal of some kind!)AIA Press release:https://www.aia.org/showcases/23066-paul-revere-williams-faia?utm_source=Real+Magnet&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=2490837301&utm_campaign=106009838ArchDaily article on 2017 Gold Medalhttp://www.archdaily.com/801106/black-and-gold-how-paul-revere-williams-became-the-first-african-american-to-win-the-aias-highest-honor?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=gplus

About Me

Architect and historian Alan Hess is the architecture critic of the San Jose Mercury News. He has written nineteen books on Modern architecture and urbanism in the mid-twentieth century, including monographs on architects Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and John Lautner, as well as architectural histories of Las Vegas and Palm Springs. Hess’ other books include Googie: Ultramodern Roadside Architecture, Forgotten Modern, and The Ranch House. He is currently researching the architecture of Irvine, California, one of the United States’ largest master-planned communities of the 1960s and 1970s.
Hess has been very active in the preservation of post-World War II architecture, qualifying several significant buildings for the National Register of Historic Places.